Ohio test providers change, but will the exams?

Sixth-grade teacher Carrie Young, back center, answers questions from her students about an exercise as they practice for the state’s standardized tests in February at Morgan Elementary School South in Stockport. Ohio is implementing new tests this year.(Photo: Ty Wright/AP file photo)

Ohio’s school testing bogeyman is gone, but could there still be a monster hiding under the desk?

The Ohio Department of Education this spring fired Pearson after its largely criticized $26.3 million rollout of the standardized exams for English and math last school year based on Common Core. The exams were developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.

Complaints ranging from the tests taking too long to logistical problems administering them to their difficulty spurred a movement of parents opting their children out of all state tests last year. It also made keeping Pearson politically impossible.

So the state hired American Institutes for Research — the firm already producing Ohio’s science and social studies exams — to take over math and English. But because the tests will pull questions from the same Common Core standards, it is unclear how much different the new exams will be.

It will likely be until at least October before that picture becomes any clearer. Roughly 250 Ohio educators have volunteered to help develop the tests, according to Marie-Elena Hall, associate director for assessments at the state.

Those educator committees met for the first time Tuesday to begin discussing the tests. Blueprints outlining the tests are slated to be released in October, with the first round of tests given in late November.

“This is a very, very tight time frame,” said Chad Aldis, with the education reform supporting education think tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “I would expect some bumps in the road in developing tests in a very narrow window. ... (But) we shouldn’t overreact to hiccups.”

Hall said she is confident the tests for this school year will be high quality and ready for students in time. This year’s tests will use more general questions that have been vetted nationally, but future tests should be tailored more to Ohio.

The good news

Ohio students will spend less time taking tests this year and districts will have less of their school calendars dedicated to testing.

Four- to five-hour exams will now be roughly three hours long, with the ability to split over two days. Additionally, schools have to give the exams only once at the end of the year, eliminating the late-winter testing period from last year.

Jan Broughton, superintendent of Fairfield Union Schools, said that change is a tremendous help for teachers who will now have more time to teach before their students are tested. It also eliminates the problems poor winter weather can cause to testing schedules.

“I think that things will be much improved this year,” said Broughton, who serves on the Ohio Senate’s advisory committee on testing.

Damon Asbury, with the Ohio School Boards Association, said the state also will require results from the new tests to be returned earlier. With the results from last spring’s tests not expected until as late as November, he said that is far too late to use as a tool to direct a student’s education.

Asbury said he thinks the changes address most of the concerns raised last year by teachers, parents and others. But that doesn’t mean everyone will be happy.

“There are still a lot of people who object to high stakes testing, regardless of how long it is,” he said.

The unknown

When announcing the selection of AIR for the state math and English tests, state Superintendent Richard Ross announced: “It will be Ohio tests for Ohio students.”

But education experts Asbury, Aldis and Broughton admitted it is impossible to know whether the actual tests will be much different for students this year because sample questions aren’t expected until later this fall.

Rep. Andy Thompson, R-Marietta, said the change was more of a diversion than true reform. He said his effort to kill the underlying Common Core standards has not been swayed because the tests are still driven by special interests and open students up to too much data mining.

“We got out of PARCC and got into something that is as bad or perhaps worse than we had before,” he said.

A survey of teachers and administrators given by the Senate testing committee early this year found more than 77 percent of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that implementation of the state tests went well. While the responses for the AIR tests was slightly better than PARCC, they were still largely negative.

Some of the complaints last year came from parents’ concerns that the tests were too difficult or not age appropriate for their children. Aldis said he expects the new tests will be rigorous, saying setting a high bar for Ohio students is critical because students previously were getting good test scores and then needing remedial classes in college.

“Hopefully, these new tests will be structured in a way that give honest feedback so kids can be prepared for whatever comes after high school,” he said.

Common Core

Thompson’s House Bill 212 would eliminate the forced use of Common Core and give local districts the flexibility to choose their own standards and their preferred method of testing. The bill has 20 co-sponsors, and Thompson said he thinks he will gain traction this year by building a groundswell of support from local districts.

Thompson is encouraging parents to opt their children out of this year’s tests by going to the Ohioans For Local Control website, ohioansforlocalcontrol.org. Numerous news reports showed a spike in testing opt-outs last year, but the number was still relatively small compared with the entire student population.

Gov. John Kasich reaffirmed his support for Common Core during a presidential campaign event Wednesday.

“I’m not going to change my position because there’s four people in the front row yelling at me,” he said.

Rep. Bill Hayes, R-Pataskala, chairs the House Education Committee and said Thompson’s bill will get a hearing, but he said he’s not been seeing as much of a push for repeal as he did before the testing changes were made.

“A lot of the frustration wasn’t about the questions but about the process,” he said.

Hayes said he thinks the process should be smoother this year, and he said he hopes that leads to fewer students opting out of the exams.

Outreach needed

What most agreed upon was that for the new tests to succeed where PARCC failed, it is critical for the state to provide consistent and reliable information about the new exams.

Broughton, from Fairfield Union, said one of the biggest focuses of the Senate committee is communication with the state’s Department of Education. Information on when the tests will be, how they will be given and what is in them needs to be clearly shared with educators and parents.

“(The state) has done a better job of putting information out already,” she said. “Last year was very hectic.”

The state has already set up a testing update website and a way for people to sign up for email alerts about the exams.

Hall said in picking volunteers for developing the tests, the state selected people to get diversity based on geography, district type, gender, race and even position — teacher, administrator, etc. This should give the state broad feedback as it chooses the questions for this year’s tests.

But Asbury said the discussion can’t simply be about the test logistics; he said more must be done to explain the state learning standards.

“Some of the same concerns are going to still be out there,” he said. “That needs to be part of the communication process as well.”

Testing Q&A

Q. Who takes the state tests?

A. Students in grades three through 12 will take tests in English, math, science and social studies.

Q. Who is producing the test?

A. After firing PARCC, the Ohio Department of Education hired American Institutes for Research to help create its math and English tests. The firm already helps create the state science and social studies tests.

Q. Will there be enough time to develop new tests for this school year?

A. State officials think so, although the tests for this year will rely on questions used on tests across the country. The tests for the 2016-17 school year will be tailored more for Ohio.

Q. How will the tests be administered?

A. Schools have the option to give the tests on paper, computers or a combination of the two.

Q. How long are the tests?

A. Each test will be about three hours and divided into two parts. Schools have the option of giving students two 90-minute tests or all at once. The PARCC math and English tests typically lasted between four and five hours.

Q. When will the tests be given?

A. Tests will be given from April 4 to May 13. Districts have flexibility in when during that time to administer the exams. The first round of the third-grade reading test will be given from Nov. 30 through Dec. 11.

Q. What will be on the tests?

A. The questions will be based on the state’s Common Core standards. Social studies and science sample questions are already available. English and math ones should be available by October.

Source: Ohio Department of Education, Fordham Institute

Developing state tests

The Ohio Department of Education is working with American Institutes of Research and Ohio educators to develop the new English and math exams. Here is their plan:

•Identify which learning standards will be tested in each grade and subject. Status: complete.

•Publish test blueprints, listing standards to be tested and percent of questions to come from that standard. Status: to be completed by October.

•Conduct a state review of the questions to ensure each aligns with the standards Ohio has chosen to test. Status: in progress.

•Have committees of Ohio educators review questions and select those that can appear on a test. Status: first meeting took place Tuesday.

•Build tests from the questions approved by the review committee. Status: to be completed by December.